She was an ordinary woman who found herself center
stage of a controversy large on the nation’s religious radar. The search
for a clerical job drove her to apply with the State of California, in
early March of 2001. Unexpectedly, the interviewing process involved a
psychological assessment that included questions about her religious views.
When pressed about her belief in God, heaven, hell and life after death,
she was disqualified. The reason? “She appeared unstable,” wrote the examiner.
The anguish of her rejection is duplicated hundreds of times every day
in situations that never see the light of day. She and a growing number
complain that their religious beliefs have caused doors to close, the
loss of acquaintances, the denial of a promotion, or a cutting disdain
hurled by a condemning, cross-eyed culture.

Especially in high circles, religion has come to
denote mental imbalance. Even when a reporter asked then candidate George
Bush, “Who was the most influential person you ever met,” Bush’s reply,
“Jesus Christ,” led to ugly whispers that continue today. The intelligencia
considered Attorney General, John Ashcroft, unqualified to be the nation’s
top cop because he believed that “God existed in actuality.” The American
political environment has grown ripe with condemnation of religious beliefs
of any kind. They have gone so far as to connect unstable Islamics with
American fundamentalists. The pope, who is a strong moralist, is laughed
at in cartoon depictions of a drunken, mad man. TV sitcoms poke fun at
Christians while Touched By An Angle, targeting America’s large Christian
population, is viewed as entertainment for religious extremists. This
in a country whose cornerstone used to hold religion as the highest of
the inalienable rights. Religion, and those who live by its precepts have
nearly lost the scrimmage between a new progressive enlightenment, where
relativism and self-fulfillment is dominant and that old time religion
that believes in a literal interpretation of scripture. But there are
reasons for this reversal.

An empty, mostly counterfeit, spirituality masquerades
as today’s religion. Instead of a vibrant quest to make contact with a
real, ever-present Spirit, which the scripture only alludes to, today’s
religion is content with reading accounts of God’s relationship with ancient
others. They unknowingly imply that Peter’s relationship with God is impossible
today. The fixation to ancient writings mirror a form of disbelief, as
if God is dead when in reality He is involved in every aspect of life.
The left has seen the powerlessness of the repetition of Bible verses,
used as the basis for Christianity. Authentic spirituality radiates from
inside individual hearts, not collective tongues or cathedrals. Our current
condition lays bear a system busy with ever-larger church-building projects,
“what’s best for my denomination” politics and perpetual
conventioning.
On Sunday mornings too many childless gatherings rock to a beat that rivals
Madonna’s band. Confused about where to look for real answers, followers
satisfy themselves with spiritual placebos and politicized sermons. Self-appointed
shepherds don't recognize the truth, even when spoken from the mouths
of their own, often troubled, children. But the most telling aspect of
religion's failure to guard the flock isn't its ineffectiveness in the
spiritual, social or political realms, but its symbiotic struggle with
the Left.

I am certainly no defender of the confused, tyrannical
Left. But who are the Left but often the sons and daughters, nieces, nephews,
cousins, spouses and uncles of the Right. The pseudo religious would have
us believe the Left landed in Washington, in space ships, from another
planet. They did not. They grew up in the TV rooms; the churches, synagogues
and under the feet of the religious right. Something went terribly wrong
when we betrayed our sacred responsibility and trusted strangers — inept
teachers (some of them) to develop our children's souls. Scapegoated into
being the cause of the nation’s evils, the Left hates the hypocrisy the
Right won't admit to. To believe our current problems are political, solved
by another law or that more of the same Sunday morning emotion-fest is
but more denial and will do only one sure thing, lead us further and faster
in the wrong direction.

While most people do not see it the religious establishment’s
worst showing was in the beginning of the effort to remove God from the
pledges. The pledge battle came after the terrible Ten Commandment losses.
It was a waste of time and energy to fight to post the Ten Commandments
on the walls of public places. The real battle had already been lost.
We'd failed to post the Ten Commandments in our homes and in our hearts.
The spirit of the Ten Commandments is nowhere to be found in America.

If reports are accurate, fewer than 36% of today's
primary and secondary students are able to read the Ten Commandments.
Like its sister issue, school prayer, these struggles represent pitiful
efforts to lock an empty barn door. Such issues are diversionary, as the
Left well knows, in their attempts to nail to the walls of the public
square what is no longer vibrant in our minds, our hearts or our homes,
all the places that give life to the beautiful laws of God. While Christendom
is busy fighting a ghost which has little to do with our problems, the
Left is unopposed in the reshaping of our original intent, as a nation.
Liberties are lost, foreigners invade every boarder, national policy is
bought and sold, and a universal blindness stumbles over the real, unseen
God while environmentalists have put nature in charge.

The centuries old substitutes of words, verses and
chapters, platitudes, plaques, songs and stained glass windows will never
suffice. No surface modifications will work, not even if every one of
the nation’s 46 million students prayed before every class. The only change
to come from symbolic, meaningless gestures will be worse, turning into
much worse. A silent, persistent truth fills America's air space. It says,
‘absent a genuine connection to Him who gave rise to America, all is futile.’
In their own, sometimes violent language, our children have already said
this in a dialect we pretend not to understand.

Our generation have been given to such deep lies
that all our efforts now are aimed at restructuring all of life to fit
our illusions and rid us of a guilt coming from a place we have declared
doesn't exist. This prevents us from calling out to the God we need more
every day. The thing that saves us is that He does actually exist and
believes in us.

Emanuel
McLittle has a Masters Degree and two decades of experience in Counseling
Psychology. His keen insight, developed over 24 years, makes him qualified
to deliver honest, unambiguous guidance. mclittle@cdsnet.net